Oh, one more thing: What did the Lohra look like BEFORE their fall from demonic grace? You never mention that, and I refuse to accept the idea that this hideous monstrosity could've EVER been considered to be the most beautiful type of demon. I just thought of a quest: the PC's are trying to rescue children from a Lohra, which has, unfortunately, proved too strong, having hired large numbers of mercenaries. Their only hope for finding the kids is to help find a cure for the Lohra's debilitating curse. Another incentive is that the Lohra in question, who is female, claims the once she takes the antidote and regains her beauty, she will gladly marry one of the PC's (after all, you said the it was the CURSE that made them ugly). Go to Comment

This princess is generally considered one of the more insufferable people in the court. Stumbling around from day to day without so much as a thought in the world, She has a remarkable talent for getting into trouble, but, much like her namesake, has no such luck in getting out on her own. Ironically, the only man alive who would bother to save her from her rather idiotic woes (at least when they threaten her well-being) is the local leader of the anti-royalty freedom fighters, who considers all human beings to be equal, and treats everyone, even her, with a relatively appropriate level of respect, which with her passes for "Would you bloody well stop getting into trouble!? If I gained a soldier for every time I've saved you, I would've overthrown the monarchy years ago!"

Note: I hadn't read the whole thing yet, and didn't notice the entry already made for the princess of dodos. This is just the version I made up on my own. Go to Comment

Hmm. I like the idea of a Ciceron: a warrior of proven reliability and piety whose only job is to protect and teach the princess. However, I just thought of something. Think about this: the kingdom is in peril. A great war has started with lands to the North, and most of the King's knights are desperately trying to hold down the border. With all of his veteran soldiers currently busy trying to keep the realm in oone piece, this mighty ruler is at a loss as to who to appoint as his 16-year-old daughter's Ciceron. Just that night, though, his prayers are answered in fire and blood. As the moon began to rise, a strange object darted down from the skies and smashed straight into the very tower that the Royal Dining Hall was located, just as it filled up for a feast! As nobles scattered in panic, the strange object opened, revealing a humanoid figure wreathed in strange armor (note: I've been playing Halo lately, so it's sort of stuck in my brain, and I'm making this dude a SPARTAN- not the Master Chief kind, but the later generations of SPARTANs). Before any of the assembled can even reach this figure, he suddenly snaps awake, climbs out of his transport, and goes to a small rack of strange tools nearby. Selecting a few of them and attaching them to his armor, he trots over to the king, detaches his helmet, and reveals a young but terribly war-scarred face. He salutes, crisply barking out (with a fairly strong British accent), "Leftenant First Class Richard Macavoy, Third SPARTAN Reconaissance. What is this place?" After a brief conversation, the already-flustered king decides that this young bugger needs to be taught a lesson, and orders the assembled guards to cut him down. With his bare hands, the stranger quickly incapacitates all of his men. Just as he is about to call for men, an enemy warband that snuck past the sentries sneaks into the castle and takes the princess hostage at the top of the citadel. Acting without any coercion, the lieutenant scales the tower and slays the attackers with his strange weapons, saving the princess. Thus, the king makes what would later be hailed as a monolithicly brilliantly decision: he votes in the newcomer as his daughter's Ciceron. Although it's a controversial move, it's balanced by the fact that this man has proven himself as an excellent warrior by any standards, and that he seems to have no intimate interest in the princess at all. And, when you consider how difficult the war's been, knowing that such a fine soldier is guarding their princess could revitalize the fighting men at the front. Go to Comment

Heh, cool. I agree with Strolen, in that I like the idea of an eternal struggle. It reminds of one of my sci-fi books, where two disgraced space marines are sent on a quest of redemption, where they are stuck in the crossfire of a feud between two demons, who have been fighting for centuries. One of the demons was sealed into an infernal locomotive, where he was driven mad by the searing agony of his condition, whilst the other was captures and used to power a fort's anti-magic defenses.

This assassin is an old hand at starting coups, revolts, and entire revolutions... with a single slash of a blade across some poor bugger's throat. As a young man, he joined the guild and enthusiastically got into the biggest political quagmire he could find, along with a few like-minded friends. After a year of slitting throats and bashing heads for cash, he trudged out alone, all of his friends dead or in hiding. He's planning to visit them... sometime. During his time there, he llearned many new techniques from the local guerrillas for killing a target (a few of which, such as the "suicide bomber" approach, he didn't really take a fancy to), but also saw a lot of death and depravity that his mind just wasn't ready for. He spends most of his time in seedy bars, getting drunk, picking fights, and trying to forget what he saw. On ther occassions that he wakes from his alcoholic coma, though, he turns from a sad drunk into a killing machine. This man has killed enough people to fill up a small city, and he's only in his very early thirties! On many occassions, he's hit on the Black Widow out of boredom and lack of any good scotch, only to wake up the next day in a Ye Olde Dumpster For Assassins, with a pounding headache and a few bruises to boot. He's still working on a good line. When he inserts into a target area, he prefers to have a network of local spies he can trust, and will try to forge one during his time there. In order to drive a target into wherever he wants them, this assassin will spend weeks launching a wave of terror of an area, destroying mills, sabotaging the local garrison's equipment, and if the the target flees to a protected area, he'll send in people disguised as cooks or whatever to flush him out. His very modus operandi is: "You may be safe from me, but you're never safe from the people."

Note: I'm about to make a new entry based off of this character. Go to Comment

AR72 Banshee Mag-Rail Assault Weapon
Note: this is set within the book series Orphanage, by Robert Buettner.

The AR72 Banshee assault rifle was the first man-portable weapon, invented by the UN Space Force, to use Mag-Rail technology. The technology was taken from the Pseudocephalopod, or "Slug's" premier anti-personnel assault weapon, which primarily made use of electromagnetic energy to create a frictionless area around the porjectile, thus propelling large shells at catastrophic speeds.

The Banshee was a bastard child of the older chemically-propelled rounds and the newer Mag-Rail technology. The operating system was simple: to activate the Mag-Rail component of the weapon, the user was required to simply rack the slide of the weapon. This only works when a rounds is chambered or is about to be chambered, both to conserve energy and also to decrease any chances of a weapons failure. This creates a completely frictionless environment within the chamber, meaning that upon the firing of the round, there would be no forces pulling upon the round itself. The firing system, when the Mag-system was active involved a mixture of both magnets lining the barrel pulling the bullet forward and the chemical reaction of the gunpowder pushing from behind. In layman's terms? Magnetic acceleration plus classic gunpowder propulsion simply means a world of hurt for whoever's on the business end of this weapon.

Reliability is at an amazing level with this weapon. Every single part of the weapon, from the main action to the individual magnets lining the barrel, is completely detachable, and the whole weapon can be taken apart within about two minutes and reassaembled within the same time. The gun actually weighs almost twice as much as the standard-issue rifles of the earlier days, such as the M20 rifle deployed by 1st Division during the Battle of Ganymede, and is also larger, but is still made of light enough plastic to allow each soldier to carry multiple spare parts. The mechanisms are well spaced-out, and none of the parts are completely attached, meaning that if one system fails, the rifle can still function as a whole. If the magazine feed fails, rounds can still be loaded in one-by-one from the breech. If the Mag-system fails, then the gun can be deployed as a normal rifle, etc.

Accuracy, due to the speed of the round, is outstanding. There have been multiple cases of grunts barely out of bootcamp managing to successfuly engage Slug targets at ranges upwards of a kilometre. In addition, standard ammunition has devloped in order to increase the damage each round can do. Upon entering a target's body cavity, a small charge within the bullet is set off by an electric pulse, causing horrible internal damage to the target. Similar rounds can be fired at a target and then detonated en masse- these rounds are designed to "burrow" into any hard objects they hit, alowing for grunts to use the rifle to blow out entire chunks of a wall in seconds, doing a combat engineer's job with a rifleman's kit.

Over three dozen different configurations exist for this weapon, including (but not limited to): a CQC carbine, a higher-caliber Designated Marksman's Rifle, a flechette-specific Crowd Control rifle, and the "Brain Gun": a specialized variation, only used by Special Forces and infantry commanders, which houses a laser designator, a panel that monitors and triangulates radio signals, an ambient noise generator, and a specialized 'puter device which designates targets for Smart Round ammunition and then guides each round into the target.

Distribution of the Banshee to Allied forces began roughly twenty yars after the opening shots of the Slug Wars (as in the destruction of the first cities) and has remained popular with the soldiers ever since. Grunts seem to enjoy using the weapon to outsmart the Slugs and to increase their already-considerable combat options. Go to Comment

This is a regular habit of mine, but I'd love to see how this nation would fare against a force of US Marines coming in for one reason or another (for example, a rift in space-time opened and a spy-plane crashed in a Zehini city, and the crew was taken hostage. Now, the Marines are launching an invasion to save the crew, who are from the USMC). Just imagine three divisions of Marine infantry and armored divisions entering the country, backed up by highly advanced airpower. How would our boys in green do against an enemy backed by the devil himself- in a sense? Go to Comment

...Oh, crap. I thought it would be like one of those movies where the bigger nation or force severely underestimates the other side and takes huge casualties, like Starship Troopers, or somethin'. However, I must admit that it makes sense. In a way, that reminds me of a game called Iron Grip: Warlord. It takes place in a nation known as Atelia, which is a medium-sized country made up of a number of city-states. The plot is simple: at one point, a much stronger nation known as the Fahrongian Confederation invades to gain control of its natural resources. As the Fahrongi forces pour in, a warlord named Sahrab begins a new strategy of guerilla warfare, in which Atelian warriors would hold the cities tenaciously for as long as possible to prompt the Fahrongi airfleets to bombard the cities to rubble, thus showing the cruel side of the Fahrongi and unifying Atelia. Hm. Does Zehin have a monarchy? If so, that would lead into two other ideas I've got. First: going with Iron Grip's plotline, a small fleet of battered airships appear in the skies above Zehin's capital (yeah, there're airships and tanks in Iron Grip: they're just very low-tech, and mainly run on steam power), and from them pours out roughly 1,500 men in torn leather battle gear and various forms of firearms. Despite their ragged appearance, they seem very well-organized. They form up in front of the palace, and one of them, armed with a battered but powerful-looking sword and a primitive assault rifle, marches forward, reveals himself as a lieutenant of the Atelian Armed Forces, and CO of the unit behind him , and asks the royal family for aid in Atelia's fight against Fahrong. Would they accept the proposition? 2nd idea: sorry, I've got another weird-arse tangent here. One organization I made up a while ago is a modern Private Military Corporation (PMC) named Liberty's Call. They're a small organization, but with incredible training and fervent political standings ( ex: allied with other PMC's, they executed a war in Darfur against the invading forces killing the locals. After a year or so of combat, the PMC's, along with their newly-trained local allies, launched a major assault against the attackers and won the war.). Either way, one of their principles is a rather overbearing disdain for monarchies, which have a habit of infringing on civil liberties (they don't screw with England because they have a democratic system of government), and will usually go to fair lengths to destroy monarchies. Upon discovering Zehin's existance and recieving misleading statements from anti-monarchy groups, they plan out an assault designed to apprehend the Zehini monarchy and bring them to justice for their "crimes." Within a month, over 4,500 Liberty's Call operatives are distributed around the country in small Operation Groups. However, over 500 attack the capital and the surrounding territory. The lynchpin of the operation is a Special Operations unit codenamed Red Hour: a 13-man unit given an elite status within Liberty's call. The mercenaries have both multiple advantages and disadvantages. For example: The soldiers are well-paid, well-motivated, equipped with the finest small-arms and man/light vehicle-portable equipment available, and trained to the point where they could blow up a tank in their sleep. They have complete confidence in the plan, and in the unit trained to carry out its most vital part. However, this ops is still very dangerous. For starters, due to the nature of their insertion (via helicopter, HALO jump, and mass parachute drops), the men can only drop in with what can be carried within a limited amount of Humvees and Stryker IFV's, as well as what can be carried on their backs, such as rocket launchers, assault rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, etc. Red Hour has been assigned three Strykers, leaving very few others available. Secondly, they literally have almost no air support. The entire force only has a single squadron of F-16 fighter-bombers supporting them, and aside from another two squadrons of attack choppers (which an adequately concealed witch or warlock could probably destroy), that's it aside from any runs by hastily converted transports. Go to Comment

Well, the Atelians wouldn't destroy the country, they'd just sail off to pick up the good fight where they left off. They aren't jerks, they're just looking for allies. As for the PMC's, if there
s no monarchy or infringement on civil liberties, they wouldn't be attacking in the first place. One thing about them is that, unless it's something truly horrible, they'll usually send in a few recon squads to the area to get a better picture of what's happening. However, they wouldn't have done it to Zehin for two reasons. First, no GPS or communication satellites are orbiting the planet, so there'd be no way to pick up their report or evac transmission. Second, as you said, Zehin's a backwater nation which very little news comes out of, so just about anything could be going down there, and noone would notice a thing. As a result, Liberty's call would see it necessary to act with decisive, overwhelming force.

Sorry, man, I just have really weird thoughts of this nature sometimes. Cool post, and thanks for answering my questions. Go to Comment

My first real D&D character was an Elven Battle Mage, whom I named El Liamo, after yours truly. My friend was acting as the DM for that run, and was running a simplified format. My character, after just a few hours, became one of my favorite weirdo characters: an alcoholic, hyper-violent, rude-joke-cracking Elven smartass who has periodic moments of arm retardation when he can't aim, as well as a chronic phobia of scorpions. This was because my guy, who's a little bit kleptomaniacal, or whatever, tried to steal from a drunk lying unconscious in the gutter. He picked four pockets: three had live scorpions in them, who then stung me, while the last one had a stone scorpion which turned out to be magical. Later on, I walked past the guy and poked him with a stick, in hopes of waking him up. He looked at me, garbled something completely incomprehensible, and threw a scorpion at my face. I tried to gut him with my glaive, but it turned out that not only did he have a spell on him that made his skin tough as stone, but my glaive was NOT made from high-quality metal. Yeah, it broke big-time. He also had a pet lion, 'cuz my friend wouldn't let me get a wolf. I think I named it Johnny....

Notable accomplishments:
- Fighting off 30 forest wolves and a very annoying bandit with the help of a giant stone scorpion.
-managing to go through a battle against level 1 enemies without killing either one, due to my atrociously bad rolls (seriously, they were pretty awful).
-Aiding a human and a werewolf in eloping (and getting slapped by the woman's mom for telling a really bad joke).
-developing both an alcohol addiction and a chronic fear of scorpions within one gaming session.
-solving a "which door to take" style puzzle through animal cruelty (Okay, there's this talking frog, right? There're two doors, and the frog says, "Passing through one of these doors will kill you, but the other one shall lead you deeper into the lair. You may ask me one question, but I shall lie to you." I asked which door was the right one, and it didn't answer, so I threw it into the door on the left, which, as luck would have it, was the wrong one).
-Learned Drunken Brawling from an alcoholic who called me "Molly."
-Getting knocked out with a stone beer bottle for, in a delirious state caused by blood loss and drunkenness, referring to a barkeeper as a "talking boulder." He said, "Don't many Elves around here." Interpreting that as an insult, I replied, "Well, you don't see many talking boulders running inns, either, but here we are." I woke up about an hour later in the gutter, next to Scorpio the drunk.

Wow, you served? Cool. I'm most likely going to join up in one of three ways:

1. Enlist out of highschool and continue my education using the Montegomery G.I. bill,
2. Use an NJROTC scholarship to get into a college, go through the Rotc course offered there, and join the armed forces as an officer, or
3. Go to one of the academies and go straight in as an officer.

P.S.: any advice on shining shoes? I can never get them to shine quite right... Go to Comment

Hmm.. So no weapon can destroy the bone, eh?... Well, for some reason I like to put guys with modern weaponry and training up against fantasy-level enemies (ex: one of my mercenary characters trying to gun down a giant with an assault rifle), so how 'bout this: instead of simply dismembering the damn thing, how about pumping it so full of bullets that pretty much all that's left of their torso is their spinal column and the corn flakes they had for breakfast? Would THAT stop the monster's rampage? I really like the idea. However, I've never liked the idea of a TRULY invincible enemy. A very skilled and dangerous enemy? Sure. Invincible? Nah. Go to Comment

I take it that you took the name from the area of Cynocephali, or the Dog's Heads, where a Roman army crushed the army of one of the empires that formed after the Macedonian Empire fell apart. That's very interesting! I like their description: it certainly sounds horrifying to look upon. If I ever play D&D again, I'm gonna sneak these in somewhere. Go to Comment

A nation was conquered and the conquerers took control and put themselves in all positions of authority. One major problem, the new rulers and the now peasant/ruled class speak entirely different languages.